Considering Sloterdijk - Open Anthropology Cooperative2019-09-15T10:02:57Zhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/forum/topics/considering-sloterdijk?feed=yes&xn_auth=noThat might be a good idea. Th…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-03-03:3404290:Comment:2397482017-03-03T13:01:58.351ZHuon Wardlehttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/HuonWardle
<p>That might be a good idea. There are some things that clearly need to be ironed out on the new site. but there are some good features too which will help discussion. The more we use the new site the more we can get things to work to do the basic things well. <a href="http://openanthcoop.net/forum/index.php/board,5.0.html" target="_blank">http://openanthcoop.net/forum/index.php/board,5.0.html</a></p>
<p>That might be a good idea. There are some things that clearly need to be ironed out on the new site. but there are some good features too which will help discussion. The more we use the new site the more we can get things to work to do the basic things well. <a href="http://openanthcoop.net/forum/index.php/board,5.0.html" target="_blank">http://openanthcoop.net/forum/index.php/board,5.0.html</a></p> Should we pause this soapy di…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-03-03:3404290:Comment:2393332017-03-03T00:00:50.840ZJohn McCreeryhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/JohnMcCreery
<p>Should we pause this soapy discussion and prepare to move it to the new OAC?</p>
<p>Should we pause this soapy discussion and prepare to move it to the new OAC?</p> Agreed. I missed out the scen…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-03-02:3404290:Comment:2397472017-03-02T11:54:22.133ZHuon Wardlehttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/HuonWardle
<p>Agreed. I missed out the scenarios in which ANT 1 kills ANT 2 with formic acid in horror at seeing something so like itself; or ANT 1 builds an enormous wall with spittle so it doesnt have to communicate with ANT 2; or ANT 1 and ANT 2 find some fermenting fruit and, even though they cannot talk to each other, they get rip-roaringly drunk and go off together to build Bubbleville 3.</p>
<p>Agreed. I missed out the scenarios in which ANT 1 kills ANT 2 with formic acid in horror at seeing something so like itself; or ANT 1 builds an enormous wall with spittle so it doesnt have to communicate with ANT 2; or ANT 1 and ANT 2 find some fermenting fruit and, even though they cannot talk to each other, they get rip-roaringly drunk and go off together to build Bubbleville 3.</p>
Foamy multiverses seem…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-03-01:3404290:Comment:2393302017-03-01T20:18:28.900ZLee Drummondhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/LeeDrummond
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<p> Foamy multiverses seem to be overshadowing the conceptual scalpel Sloterdijk employs as a <i>Zietdianostiker</i>, or pathologist of the social. I’ll have to do some background reading here – but then that would spoil all the spontaneous fun – but when you think about it, isn’t that what any really good journalist or anthropologist of contemporary society should do – document the underlying disease/neurosis that is civilization? Hey, this isn’t just morbid me – blame…</p>
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<p> Foamy multiverses seem to be overshadowing the conceptual scalpel Sloterdijk employs as a <i>Zietdianostiker</i>, or pathologist of the social. I’ll have to do some background reading here – but then that would spoil all the spontaneous fun – but when you think about it, isn’t that what any really good journalist or anthropologist of contemporary society should do – document the underlying disease/neurosis that is civilization? Hey, this isn’t just morbid me – blame Papa Sigmund. I think anthropology should produce thinkers/writers on a par with I. F. Stone and Seymour Hersh. Also, for more “cultural” analysis, Camille Paglia and Tom Wolfe. </p>
<p> Really like Huon’s ant-ecdote. But I do think it assigns too much commonality to the denizens of separate bubbles. Popping in for a chat is extremely unlikely. When E. T. lands he probably won’t disembark and say, “Take me to your leader.” (And boy would he be in for a shock when that happened!). Let me give you a homey example, yep, a homily: I live in a house with birds and cats and sea monkeys (brine shrimp, don’t ask). I’m sure that semiosis occurs among us, that is, utterances and actions of one that carry significance for the others. But there is nothing like a shared language (the birds can’t even cuss) or even a “grammar” of behaviors. Still, I’m pretty sure the birds and cats understand each other – each other’s actions, motivations, intentions. So semiotic processes are underway. Things get trickier when we ponder get-togethers among sapient beings with their own communicative codes (“languages” as a gloss). The 10<sup>th</sup> generation of Siri, say, or chimeric human-animal beings coming out of CRISPR labs. Maybe E. T. will even make that long-awaited appearance; we are clearly fascinated by the idea – just try to count the number of alien movies that have come between <i>The Day the Earth Stood Still</i> and <i>Arrival</i>. So, on and on into those bubbly multiverses. </p> I am reminded both of possibl…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-28:3404290:Comment:2392822017-02-28T12:24:44.919ZJohn McCreeryhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/JohnMcCreery
<p>I am reminded both of possibly apocryphal stories about tribes whose names for themselves all mean "human,"in contrast to the inhuman others next door, a motif picked up in science fiction stories in which future galaxies are filled with planets whose names can all be translated "Earth."</p>
<p>I am reminded both of possibly apocryphal stories about tribes whose names for themselves all mean "human,"in contrast to the inhuman others next door, a motif picked up in science fiction stories in which future galaxies are filled with planets whose names can all be translated "Earth."</p> "Allow, too, the possibility…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-28:3404290:Comment:2394842017-02-28T11:23:53.683ZHuon Wardlehttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/HuonWardle
<p>"Allow, too, the possibility that there are other ants, so that ants may meet, exchange information about what they have experienced, and develop theories about the walls they must penetrate to move from one bubble to another. . . "</p>
<p>ANT 1: (poking head through bubble wall). WEESH, this stuff gets in your antennae... oh, hey, yo where are you from? (focussing a fuzzy gaze on ANT 2)</p>
<p>ANT 2: Well, erm... originally I am from bubbleville</p>
<p>ANT 1: Oh, there's a place called that…</p>
<p>"Allow, too, the possibility that there are other ants, so that ants may meet, exchange information about what they have experienced, and develop theories about the walls they must penetrate to move from one bubble to another. . . "</p>
<p>ANT 1: (poking head through bubble wall). WEESH, this stuff gets in your antennae... oh, hey, yo where are you from? (focussing a fuzzy gaze on ANT 2)</p>
<p>ANT 2: Well, erm... originally I am from bubbleville</p>
<p>ANT 1: Oh, there's a place called that where I come from</p>
<p>ANT 2: hmm... you don't say, The Commentator must have handed out more than one place with that name then, who knew.</p>
<p>ANT 1: errmm 'The Commentator' -- what's that?</p>
<p>ANT 2: you know -- the Transcendental Semiotician, the Great Explainer, the One Who Set It All Up</p>
<p>ANT 1: set what up? Where does The Commentator live--somewhere down your way?</p>
<p>ANT 2: No, The Commentator made bubble world, they don't live here. They gotta see what is going on... Up... (gestures tangentially with antenna)... up, up in the Commentator's box...</p>
<p>ANT 1: OK, I see... well maybe... whatever you say, Brother... Be seeing you, then (the ants clamber past each other, laboriously pushing through the membrane in opposite directions.</p>
These are some really…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-27:3404290:Comment:2392812017-02-27T21:42:59.435ZLee Drummondhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/LeeDrummond
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<p> These are some really tough questions, or, as The Donald would say, very, very tough – he seems to like that redundancy. Incredibly, the saga of René the ant seems to have legs here; his journey through the ocean of foam to the nose bleed seats of the Rose Bowl. Perhaps the toughest question is what, if any, semiotic encounters occur between bubbles – is any sort of intersystemic communication possible? Then there’s the matter of perspective: a commentator in the…</p>
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<p> These are some really tough questions, or, as The Donald would say, very, very tough – he seems to like that redundancy. Incredibly, the saga of René the ant seems to have legs here; his journey through the ocean of foam to the nose bleed seats of the Rose Bowl. Perhaps the toughest question is what, if any, semiotic encounters occur between bubbles – is any sort of intersystemic communication possible? Then there’s the matter of perspective: a commentator in the press box vis-à-vis René and possible fellow travelers negotiating the sea of foam. My analogy is admittedly a balancing act. Pushed too far and we have bubble worlds with no or limited connection. In other words, warmed-over Whorf and Benedict – all those self-contained, coherent little “cultures.” With my limited understanding, physicists seem to confront a similar problem in wrangling over what if any relationship may exist between parallel universes. Regarding the detached commentator, I do assign such a role to the operation of what I grandly call semiotic antinomies that transect the semiospace of the Rose Bowl. Animal - Artifact/Tool, Self-We – Other/Them, Creation/Life Force – Destruction/Death Force are dynamic generative principles whose push-pull assigns diverse, always conflicted and contested <i>identities</i> to beings possessed of semiosis. Those antinomies operate within a certain expanse of a wider multiverse. They define, as I see it, extreme boundaries of the possibly human, limiting condition. I know, pretty rarefied and vague, but I like the formulation for two reasons. First, it rejects any sort of fixity to an ever-changing construct, “humanity,” and in the process gets rid of any lingering thought that there exists a “human nature.” Second, the geometric/topological model (something like Leach’s of old) unseats language (and, ah yes, the “linguistic turn”) from its privileged position in cultural analysis. Language, as I’ve suggested before, may be just a flash in the pan, a hiccup in the unfolding semiotic enterprise that encompasses, for the time being, the human species. </p>
<p> On an entirely different note, my point about retooling cultural anthropology as a pathology of the social does not derive from structuralism and Lévi-Strauss, but from Nietzsche and Camus (and, yes, that grand theoretician, William Burroughs). And I reject as self-serving posturing pomos’ claim that Fritz is their intellectual ancestor. He is not. Apart from slicing and dicing his texts, simply compare Fritz’s excoriating treatment of a Germany on its way to fascism with the wooly discourse about the ontology of this or that favored by today’s crop of, what are we to call them? Post-pomos? </p> Suppose, however, that like r…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-27:3404290:Comment:2394832017-02-27T19:13:18.874ZJohn McCreeryhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/JohnMcCreery
<p>Suppose, however, that like real bubbles, our metaphorical ant's bubbles are fundamentally similar, all being formed of the same universal mixture of the cosmic equivalents of soap and water. Allow, too, the possibility that there are other ants, so that ants may meet, exchange information about what they have experienced, and develop theories about the walls they must penetrate to move from one bubble to another. . . . . . .Doesn't seem like a bad metaphor for the human condition, breaking…</p>
<p>Suppose, however, that like real bubbles, our metaphorical ant's bubbles are fundamentally similar, all being formed of the same universal mixture of the cosmic equivalents of soap and water. Allow, too, the possibility that there are other ants, so that ants may meet, exchange information about what they have experienced, and develop theories about the walls they must penetrate to move from one bubble to another. . . . . . .Doesn't seem like a bad metaphor for the human condition, breaking through cultural barriers and discovering more humans on the other side. . . .</p> The ant and the bubbles is a…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-27:3404290:Comment:2393912017-02-27T14:01:07.171ZHuon Wardlehttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/HuonWardle
<p>The ant and the bubbles is a great metaphor and it is like Latour's bubbly cosmoses too--ant cannot really compare cosmoses because she is always in one or other cosmic bubble, or halfway between. My problem is with the position from which we can 'see' ant--because, following through the bubble analogy, 'synopsis' is impossible. Focusing first on the ant laboriously pushing itself into and through all those 'semiotic' chambers then we must put ourselves in two positions. One is ant's;…</p>
<p>The ant and the bubbles is a great metaphor and it is like Latour's bubbly cosmoses too--ant cannot really compare cosmoses because she is always in one or other cosmic bubble, or halfway between. My problem is with the position from which we can 'see' ant--because, following through the bubble analogy, 'synopsis' is impossible. Focusing first on the ant laboriously pushing itself into and through all those 'semiotic' chambers then we must put ourselves in two positions. One is ant's; 'I,ant, am pushing my way through many cosmo-bubbles'. Or from the position of the person up in the commentator's box; 'look at ant go! She has made it into bubble no. 5000'.</p>
<p>Here is the problem: ant can only be seen to be doing this Sysiphean thing from the point of view of commentator; ant can only see bubbles and more bubbles and has no awareness of its own 'total' situation. So ant needs commentator for its 'semiotic' bubbly interpretation to be true, but commentator cannot exist for ant -- ant's environment is just bubbles. Thus the 'semiotic' situation does not exist for ant, just bubble feels; indeed the entire scenario does not exist either unless we posit commentator taking their synoptic view on it from above. How can commentator live outside the totality of the system? So, either the semiotic synopsis is a fantasy made up by ant, or ant has more total awareness of the wider panorama than we are allowing and is capable of doing their own transcendental semiosis on a par with commentator which makes ant as much a commentator on commentator's own enclosure, as commentator is on ant's. Thus the total 'semiosis' collapses that way too. As Bateson repeats; a category cannot be a member of the group that it defines, but neither can we posit content for a category (bubbles in an enclosure) without positing the category (bubble enclosures). You feel me?</p> Foam is an intriguing image,…tag:openanthcoop.ning.com,2017-02-27:3404290:Comment:2395932017-02-27T13:17:26.365ZJohn McCreeryhttps://openanthcoop.ning.com/profile/JohnMcCreery
<p>Foam is an intriguing image, with its focus on the walls that divide bubble, which may sometimes merge and more often collapse — in contrast to networks or webs of meaning imagery that draws our attention to the links connecting points and the flows of information/goods/memes from one point to another.</p>
<p>I can see how structuralist binaries like the ones you [Lee Drummond] use so successfully in <i>American Dream Time</i> define multidimensional spaces in which networks form. I am still…</p>
<p>Foam is an intriguing image, with its focus on the walls that divide bubble, which may sometimes merge and more often collapse — in contrast to networks or webs of meaning imagery that draws our attention to the links connecting points and the flows of information/goods/memes from one point to another.</p>
<p>I can see how structuralist binaries like the ones you [Lee Drummond] use so successfully in <i>American Dream Time</i> define multidimensional spaces in which networks form. I am still wrestling with how to think about foams analytically. The ant exploring his multiverse is great, but how to we track, let alone explain, its path?</p>